10 Reasons Why The Lost City Of Atlantis EXISTS In West Africa

It is not sleeping with the fishes.

Aquaman Atlantis
Axelspace Corporation / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)/DC

Almost everybody is familiar with the myth of the lost city of Atlantis. Many brilliant minds have spent countless hours puzzling over the truth of its existence and its location. It has been the subject of much debate and many adventurers have set out to find the sunken city that Aquaman hails from.

The most reliable information that we have on Atlantis comes from the 4th-century Greek philosopher, Plato. He heard the story from his teacher, Socrates, who learned it from the famed Athenian statesman and poet, Solon. The Athenian, in turn, heard it from a priest during his travels in Egypt.

Some argue that Atlantis was simply a literary device used by Plato to demonstrate the dangers that lie in wait for a democracy that indulges in military expansion. Others believe that it was a historical account of an ancient civilization that was lost to a nasty combination of an earthquake and a flood.

Traditionally, Atlantis is thought to be lost underwater, but perhaps that is not the entire story. If we are to take Plato’s account as fact, then a very suitable candidate arises for the lost city. It exists in Africa, specifically in West-Central Mauritania, and it is called the Richat Structure, or more colloquially, the Eye of the Sahara.

10. Plato Describes It Perfectly

Aquaman Atlantis
Public Domain [Wikimedia Commons]

In his book, Critias, Plato’s description of the main city of Atlantis is quite specific.

He describes it as consisting of “alternate zones of sea and land, larger and smaller, encircling one another; there were two of land and three of water, which he turned as with a lathe, each having its circumference equidistant every way from the center”.

If one were to observe the Richat structure, they would find that it is formed of several concentric circles, specifically, three rings of water (if there were water flowing into it) and two rings of land. Maybe they didn’t have an equivalent of the word concentric in Plato’s time, or maybe he was just trying to reach the required word count for his publisher.

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Kabir Lal is a freelancer with a keen interest in the paranormal and offbeat. He has released a video game about his experiences in life called Overcome. He enjoys writing and his work can be found at https://medium.com/@overcomestudios